Seven
Mexican Art and Architecture in Paris
Patriotic history and the scientific claims of an anthropological nationalism became a single formula in graphic arts. The art scholar Fausto Ramírez has lucidly shown the chief dilemma that permeated Mexican art during the late nineteenth century: the dichotomy between nationalism and cosmopolitanism.[1] What follows explains how this dichotomy was an inherent component of late-nineteenth-century culture. In being modern there was no way to opt for either pure nationalism or pure cosmopolitanism, only—and inevitably—to be part of the continuing dichotomy.
This inquiry into the artistic aspects of the emblematic Aztec Palace in Paris comprises several stages. First, I will examine the architectural foundations of the palace, which reveal much about the political and artistic negotiations behind the construction of a modern nation. Second, I consider the facade of the palace, because in it the summary of history and art acquired its best expression. Lastly, I analyze the many paintings and photographs that made the nation look both modern and truly colorful. These examinations show that there was an art to the art involved in assembling a tangible representation of a modern nation.
The Architectural Foundations
In 1889 a question much pondered by Mexicans was how to show any meaningful art in Paris, "the capital of France, at present the world's most artistic nation," as it was described by the Mexican painter and director of the Mexican art exhibit in Paris, José María Velasco.[2] This was a problem not only for Mexico but also for all Latin American, African, and Asian countries. They all confronted the dichotomy between national motifs, tendencies, and schools and cosmopolitan techniques and canons.[3] Their solutions
varied. Whereas Mexico decided to experiment with a particular combination of national figures in a cosmopolitan fashion, Argentina hired the French architect A. Ballu and various French sculptors to construct its pavilion and the sculptures that adorned it.[4] Chile also hired a French architect—Picq, the creator of the Gas Industry Pavilion. Other Latin American countries decided to play it safe by using the Spanish artistic synthesis that was more or less well recognized by the rest of Europe. Thus Bolivia constructed a Spanish Renaissance building. Still others decided, as Mexico had, to exploit their exoticism. Accordingly, Ecuador constructed a representation of the Inca Temple of the Sun, even though the project was not only designed by French architects but also conceived by the French anthropologist E. T. Hamy, who donated some authentic figures to give the building a more genuine flavor.[5] That is, it was a ready-made exotic ruin, conceived by French architects and anthropologists, to satisfy French orientalism. Mexico, in contrast, did not hire French engineers, architects, or anthropologists. The expenses were already too high, and, besides, there was no need to hire them, because Mexico already had confident, French-trained technocrats and architects.
As I have argued in chapters 5 and 6, the Aztec Palace, never reconstructed, constituted an experimental architectural form, which was to be constantly referred to in the continuing discussion over how to represent the nation. Although Mexico participated in the Madrid historical exhibition of 1892 and the 1893 Chicago world's fair, it was not until the 1900 Paris fair that the exhibition team designed another pavilion. By then, the 1889 Aztec Palace was regarded as a total failure, a judgment applied not only to the building itself but also to the entire effort to achieve a true national architectural style through the use of pre-Hispanic models. Sebastián de Mier, in charge of Mexican efforts at the 1900 Paris fair, concluded that a real Mexican architectural style did not exist. In his view, to imitate pre-Hispanic styles was as artificial and useless as trying to copy colonial Spanish structures. Both tendencies were simply inadequate for modern standards of comfort, hygiene, and aesthetics. More importantly, neither one fully represented what nineteenth-century Mexico was like. De Mier believed that until a real Mexican style was developed, Mexico's best option was to adopt a proven style. Thus Mexico opted for a neoclassical palace for the 1900 Paris fair.[6]
Undoubtedly, this decision was motivated more by changing European taste than by the long-lasting nationalistic debates.[7] Nonetheless, it does illustrate relative agreement among the Porfirian elite on the issue of how to represent the Mexican nation artistically. Open debate over this issue began in the 1860s in literature, painting, and architecture, and the point in question was how to develop a real national style—or, better yet, paraphrasing Ignacio Manuel Altamirano, how to achieve a relative originality for Mexico's artistic forms,[8] relative because the style had to be Mexican while following the universal patterns of beauty. Intellectual circles, from the Acade-
mia de Letrán (1830s) to the romantic Renacimiento group (1860s), to the more "scientific" La Libertad group (1870s), all dealt with this issue, summarized by one literary critic as "the on-going fights and transitory weddings of banana and marble."[9]
To bring about a national style might be considered commonplace in the literary and artistic history of any nation. From this perspective, the Aztec Palace could be seen as just one example of the various architectural styles employed in the nineteenth century.[10] Yet, from the perspective of a history of modern nationalism, these attempts epitomized by the Aztec Palace acquire a different configuration. In fact, the accomplishment of a modern nation was a matter of experimenting with forms; that is, styles. Thus, to achieve a national style (architectural, literary, artistic) was a redundancy, because the nation was style itself. A national style was, at bottom, a question of incorporating styles into a homogeneous and relatively harmonious form recognized as being that of the nation. This incorporation was a manner of constant negotiation among and within political and cultural elites. Accordingly, the 1889 Aztec Palace made use of pre-Hispanic features to portray the nation in the same way that the 1900 neoclassical building also symbolized the nation; each represented a different moment in the negotiation of national representations (that is, the set of styles identified as national at certain historical moments). Both buildings were simultaneously, on one hand, domestic and international experiments and, on the other, statements regarding modernity and nationalism. Let me explore this negotiation through the example of the Aztec Palace.[11]
The 1889 Mexican pavilion did not receive universal applause. Both Mexicans and foreigners criticized it, but it generated more commentary than any other Mexican building, however great, ever had. The international decline of classicism in architecture, together with the emergence of innovative modern styles, as exemplified by the Eiffel Tower and the Machines Gallery, formed a peculiar and somewhat auspicious setting for the Aztec Palace to be appreciated and accepted. People who favored conservative classical tendencies did not seriously consider the Mexican pavilion; those who supported innovative tendencies were too amazed by such technological experiments as the Eiffel Tower to be very impressed by the Mexican effort.[12] Even so, late-nineteenth-century ethnographic and orientalist tendencies had provided a special place for exotic architecture, as architectural historian Z. Çelik argued in the case of the Arab pavilions.[13]
Despite the many official and semiofficial reports that applauded the Mexican pavilion, important architects—for example, the French designer of the Paris Opera House, Charles Garnier—could scarcely conceal their dislike of it.[14] Albert Ballu, the French architect who designed the 1889 Argentine pavilion and who was also hired by Argentina to report on the advancement of architecture in Paris 1889, informed his employers that the Mexican build-
ing was not to his taste. He asserted that the Aztec Palace looked "somewhat heavy" and that its sculpture was "quite weak." He criticized Mexico for having the audacity to exhibit such sculpture in Paris.[15] Similarly, in Mexico Alfredo Bablot deplored the contrast between the palace's facade and its modern interior. He claimed that the building presented an antiartistic monotony, "without any of the notoriety, appeal, or optical diversity found in the building's interior, whose forms and lines had nothing of the Aztec."[16] In addition, and despite the fact that most Mexican media did not print either national or international criticism of the building, El Hijo de Ahuizote often caricatured the indigenist architectural and ideological claims of the Porfirian elite. It especially satirized the irony of the members of a very pro-French elite wearing pre-Hispanic outfits and functioning as idol-shaped columns for a palace of Aztec authoritarianism, which echoed Porfirio Díaz's dictatorship (see chapter 10). Mexican Catholic opinion very much resented the building (which had a teocalli form) for its pagan connotations. For example, in 1890 El Nacional published an article which supported the idea that universal criteria of beauty were derived from God and which, therefore, observed that both the Eiffel Tower and the Aztec Palace were vain efforts at "genuine creations."[17] Later on, between 1898 and 1900, when an open discussion about a national architectural style took place among architects, the Catholic architect Manuel Francisco Álvarez sarcastically described the Aztec Palace as a structure that "is reduced to mimicking a teocalli , which is to say a truncated pyramid with a rectangular base, in whose top platform human sacrifice took place."[18] In effect, there was no way to portray the nation in an Indian-like fashion without causing controversies.
The search for a style for the nation was coming to a critical juncture in the 1880s, as a result not only of the previous long-lasting ideological discussions but also of the artistic and economic framework that the Porfirian regime furnished for the debate. For the construction of national architectural symbols there were an old tendency and two new trends. First, there were those who planned a lasting trust in Mexico as a continuation of Spanish colonial times, with colonial architecture as the natural national style. Second, there were those who sought to use the pre-Hispanic past to construct a real national architecture. Third, there were those who favored the imitation of European schools, with its implicit attempt to keep up-to-date on European architectural stylistic developments. All these schools of thought shared a belief in the need to follow advances in modern construction and standards of comfort and hygiene.
French discussions of how to architecturally represent the nation were neither consensual nor definitive. Technological advances were promptly accepted and used by all styles, though they were not unanimously considered art. French architects were trying to bring about a new synthesis, one that could overcome stale classicism, passé romanticism, and the national his-
toricism of the sort proposed by Eugène Viollet-le-Duc.[19] Since the 1850S, some architects had favored synthesizing advances in engineering construction with architectural aesthetics, and others affirmed the purely artistic character of architecture. The 1889 Paris fair meant the momentary triumph of the former, with the Eiffel Tower and the Machines Gallery as their major symbols. But at the 1900 fair, the artistic architects took revenge.[20]
Indeed, the entire "nineteenth century [was] the period par excellence of architectural revivals,"[21] because modernity had produced progress but also disharmony, "without the power to create and . . . constrained to borrow."[22] After 1855 a general eclecticism prevailed: in this era of revivals it seemed that no new architectural styles could be created, only technical capabilities to better reproduce and combine old styles. "The relics of the past have been restored with a perfection that was unknown in the epochs of their creation," Eugène-Melchior de Vogüé observed in his commentaries on the 1889 fair.[23] In such a wide discussion there was a huge spectrum of principles and ideas for Mexican architects to copy.
In discovering the Mexican architectural past, Mexican architects had to face a technical-aesthetic problem that had to do both with the specificities of European eclecticism and with the development of the architectural profession in Mexico. In 1889 Antonio Peñafiel and Antonio de Anza, as well as Luis Salazar, believed that the spatial usage and construction techniques of pre-Hispanic cultures were adaptable to modern building construction. This had already been demonstrated in the Egyptian pavilion for the 1867 Paris world's fair—"a living lesson in archaeology," which summarized Egypt's history in a modern and useful structure—so it was not surprising that the Aztec Palace had a peculiar similarity to its Egyptian precursor.[24]
But the pre-Hispanic Mexican style was considered, as Garnier's Histoire de l'habitation illustrated, outside the development of modern architecture. Nonetheless, world's fairs were unique stages for using pre-Hispanic (that is, exotic) styles to create a feasible and acceptable form of architectural modernity—or at least such was the belief echoed by Mexican officials and intellectuals. After all, the renowned Crystal Palace of 1851, constructed by Owen Jones, was inspired by exotic archaeological sources—Greek, Egyptian, and Moorish.
Of course, the Mexican pavilion and the Aztec dwelling in the French habitation exhibit appealed to an already established European interest in pre-Hispanic architectural forms.[25] French classicist architectural studies hardly dealt with Mexican pre-Hispanic architectural forms, although history and archaeology, through the obsession with Egyptian and oriental styles, were fundamental parts of late-nineteenth-century French architecture.[26] Nonetheless, influential and revolutionary architects like Viollet-le-Duc had written about pre-Hispanic American architectural styles. Both in his exhibit and in his prologue to Charnay's book, Viollet-le-Duc had praised pre-Hispanic
techniques and environmental adaptability.[27] For him there was only one style—"the manifestation of an ideal based on a principle"—the rest were various forms that helped to distinguish schools and epochs. Style was a rational human process of appreciation and creation, not an attribute of objects.[28] Hence pre-Hispanic Mexican architecture was less a style than a form: one that was known in Europe but that was not considered an authentic style. Although European archaeologists praised pre-Hispanic architectural forms, architectural historians often referred to their backward use of space and to their general barbarism. Mexican builders were thus caught between European archaeological and architectonic appetites.
Aesthetically, the Mexican revival of pre-Hispanic forms was indeed at odds with the European revivals, but not with the very important fact of reviving. The Aztec Palace appealed to the ethnographic, archaeological, and anthropological concerns of Europeans, but as an artistic depiction it aimed to be approved within the European decline of classicism. Simultaneously, it sought to finally attain what a Mexican architect of the 1910s called the di-rectriz (main guidance) from which to develop a genuine national architectural style.[29]
Technically, the search for a national architecture had to confront the problems of technology transfer as much as the cross-cultural techno-aesthetic difficulties. Since the 1870s Mexican architecture had kept relatively well abreast of European and American developments in the field. Mexican architects like Antonio Rivas Mercado, who had studied in Europe, played an important role in bringing technical innovation to the country. But more significant in this regard were the various foreign architects who were privately and officially hired to construct buildings in Mexico. Along with technological innovation, however, came conservative resistance to innovative styles.
In Mexico engineering and architecture had been separated as disciplines as early as 1867.[30] Engineering acquired its own spot in the Colegio de Minería; architecture remained part of the Bellas Artes school of San Carlos. Conflicts between the two professions were common throughout the last two decades of the nineteenth century, when engineers began to construct houses and public buildings.[31] Until the beginning of the twentieth century, Mexican architects fought back by seeking to control the architectural forms of the Porfirian regime. Beyond a concern with protecting the economic and political interests of each guild, this struggle was also an echo of international tendencies. Conflicts among European architects and engineers were also common. At the 1889 Paris world's fair, for instance, the Eiffel Tower and the Machines Gallery, the most noteworthy structures in the exhibition, were planned by engineers. French architects complained on the same grounds their Mexican counterparts used: architecture was an art and belonged to artists (that is, to architects).[32]
In Mexico, architects were technically trained in new construction meth-
ods, but they resented the engineers who constructed the buildings. But in Mexico's presence at world's fairs, engineers were the executors of the ideas of artists and architects. De Anza belonged to the generation that had experienced the separation between engineering and architecture; he himself was both an architect and an engineer.[33] Luis Salazar graduated in 1873, and although he belonged to the first generation to have been fully trained in engineering, he also studied at the Academia de San Carlos.[34] The technical influence of both de Anza and Salazar meant that the 1889 pavilion combined architectural eclecticism with the then high-tech exhibitions architecture based on metal structures.[35]
At the 1889 Paris fair, France's longing for exoticism and its own endeavor to achieve new eclectic architectural forms constituted a mandate to a Mexican government that was eager to link itself to international culture and markets. But the discussion that underpinned the 1889 Aztec Palace was postponed until the last years of the nineteenth century, when a debate about pre-Hispanic style in architecture acquired importance. In such a debate, the Spanish legacy was revived yet again to serve as the matrix for a national architectural representation of the nation. In this exchange the Aztec Palace was commonly cited either as the example to be followed or, more often, as a mistake to be avoided (about this debate, see chapter 11).
It is important to explain why such a discussion achieved a full and vivid expression only in the late 1890s and not in 1889. In the first place, an international—mostly French—decline of aesthetic exotic eclecticism occurred, as signaled by both the classicist revival and the art nouveau tone of the 1900 Paris fair.[36] Second, by the late 1890s Mexican architecture achieved a hitherto unknown level of professionalization and technical expertise, becoming both an important subject of study and a significant industry. This was made possible in large part by urbanization and a growing demand for both public and private buildings.[37] Finally, in the 1890s the discussion was also influenced by the emergence of a historical perspective in architecture, fostered by the traditional Mexican architectural training and by nationalism. This historicization of architecture made it possible to see that what had previously been regarded as only trial-and-error episodes in Mexico's architecture, with no apparent history, could in fact be organized in a progressive line of architectural development.
In 1899, in an article discussing the upcoming 1900 Paris world's fair,[38] Nicolás Mariscal argued that whereas in 1889 the star attraction of the exhibition had been the Eiffel Tower, in 1900 the Palace of Electricity was to be the core of things. To prove his point that France itself had retreated from its extravagant mechanistic demonstrations of 1889, Mariscal noted that the Eiffel Tower was being painted blue to reduce its visibility, a clear sign that the architectural excesses of the preceding decade were now being camouflaged by the French themselves. Mariscal seemed to suggest that Mexico
also ought to abandon its architectural radicalism of 1889. But this occurred in the context of a debate about what building would depict Mexico in the 1900 fair. In this connection, between 1895 and 1899 Luis Salazar published and republished various works on archaeology and architecture to support his idea of a national architecture inspired by the pre-Hispanic tradition.[39] (It will be remembered that he had proposed a pre-Hispanic design in 1889 and had helped to construct the winning Peñariel and de Anza design.) The Aztec Palace of 1889, together with the Cuauhtémoc monument and the monuments to the Aztec kings Ahuizotl and Itzcoatl on the Paseo de la Re-forma, were the most significant examples of this sort of architecture, and Salazar continued to approve of it. For him, race and civilization were fundamental concepts, whose development should be reflected in architecture. However, Salazar also believed that it was impossible to create a genuinely new style; all attempts were in essence revivals and reconstructions of past models. What he proposed was an eclectic and selective search through the past for useful and needed elements for present usage, just as the Europeans were doing. Indeed, this eclectic selectiveness echoed the entire Porfirian treatment of Mexico's Indian past and present.
Salazar maintained that "paying no attention to pagan constructions . . . and the ancients' needs which do not fit today's [needs], it is feasible to en-sayar [attempt] the creation, if not of a complete new style, at least of an architecture that is characteristically national." Consequently, in searching for useful pre-Hispanic forms, Salazar referred to Garnier's reconstruction of an Aztec dwelling. With regard to the Aztec Palace, he noted that it was not really an incorporation of archeological styles into modern architecture. Instead, he proposed to adapt pre-Hispanic styles to modern architecture, in order to achieve an "improved imitation" and a "fruitful appropriation."[40]
Salazar's architectural proposal received an immediate and sarcastic response from one Tepoztecaconetzin Calquetzani, who seems to have been either Nicolás Mariscal, director of El Arte y la Ciencia , or the architect Francisco Rodriguez. The author believed that although the pre-Hispanic style was proper for Cuauhtémoc's monument—a monument to an Indian—other uses of the style were a "chimeric and useless undertaking." He also believed that the eclectic selectiveness and combinations of the various pre-Hispanic styles were at odds with modern techniques and uses of space. In particular, he deplored the Aztec Palace of the 1889 Paris world's fair as a structure in which all styles had been fragmented and made into pure fantasy. "Was there ever a sound reason for a rebirth of aboriginal architecture?" he wondered. No. World's fair pavilions "should bear contemporary society's aesthetic feeling, and reflect as truly as possible the host country's arts and architecture." An Aztec Palace would not serve, because it portrayed a Mexico before the Spanish Conquest (that is, a non-Mexico), and the author hoped that the failure of the structure would serve as a lesson to avoid future mistakes. For
him, archaeological ruins ought to be preserved in museums as the remains of a civilization and a race "lost forever in eternity."[41]
Both Salazar and Mariscal, albeit in very different fashions, were trying to be cosmopolitan. The designs of both men were used in international fairs or in public buildings according to the decisions of their elite clientele who had to take into consideration the domestic debate as well as international fashion.[42] In fact, their attempts to construct a cosmopolitan style were not determined solely by artistic tendencies, but by the intersection of many tendencies that had to do with race, economics, cultural progress, and nationalism.
In our eyes, the architects of late-nineteenth-century Mexico may seem to have been particularly penetrating in their understanding of the relationship between nationalism and modernity. Both those who favored European classical styles and those who endorsed pre-Hispanic models showed signs of being aware of their own eventuality. Buildings are erected with an inevitable hope that they are permanent, but also with an awareness of the ephemeral character of their stylistic conception.[43] Some of the Mexican architects involved in the discussion of national architecture understood this and stated their different proposals accordingly. Mexican architects believed that they were living in a time when modern forms and contents were being negotiated. They sought only a provisional solution: to ensayar and to find directrices .
Ensayar meant that it was worthwhile to experiment, not with a new style but with a variant of late-nineteenth-century eclecticism. In the 1880s architects had no alternative but to keep trying to come up with the proper combination of national and international tendencies in order to define the nation architecturally.[44] Even later architects, promoters of the revival of the colonial style, were uncertain about the real form of a national architecture. Jesús T. Acevedo, an architect trained in the last decade of the Porfirian period, also criticized the Aztec Palace, because he believed that the pre-His-panic structures could "only be the result of archaeological lucubrations." Making use of a biological metaphor, he claimed that colonial architecture was the directriz of evolution from which a real national architecture could emerge.[45] Also in 1913, Federico E. Mariscal criticized the attempts to recreate pre-Hispanic architecture and pointed out that it was in the colonial period that the elements of Mexican nationhood were combined. Yet these pro-colonial architects only indicated where the roots of a possible transformation could be; they did not elaborate a clear image of what a national style should look like.[46] They too were experimenting.
In sum, Mexican architecture displayed a great deal of ambivalence and disenchantment about the possibilities of a national architectural style. In their confusion, however, Mexican architects were more modern than they often realized.
Facades
The Aztec Palace was also a showcase for various forms of artistic expression that echoed domestic interpretations of universal principles. On the facade of the building, twelve figures of Aztecs gods and kings were represented. Inside, countless sculptures, canvases, and photographs were displayed.
In order to acquire a bronze existence, the gods and goddesses Centeotl, Tlaloc, Chalchiutlicue, Camaxtli, Xochiquetzal, and Yacatecuhtli and the kings and heroes Itzcoatl, Nezahualcoyotl, Totoquihuatzin, Cacama, Cuitlahuac, and Cuauhtémoc had to have a historical existence demonstrated by historiographical endeavors (see chapter 5). But to actually acquire specific physiognomical characteristics, positions, and overall image, they needed to be artistically conceived. The archaeologist and historian Antonio Peñafiel, in collaboration with the young sculptor Jesús Contreras, undertook this task.[47]
Tlaloc was described by Peñafiel as a man carrying thunder in his right hand and "a hieroglyph in the face." As represented by Contreras, Tlaloc appeared with a snake in his left hand and wearing Roman-style clothing (see Fig. 10). In fact, in the Aztec mythology Tlaloc was often represented carrying a snake. The historian Francisco del Paso y Troncoso had interpreted this snake as meaning "tempestuous cloud." What Peñafiel described as a hieroglyph was indeed a mask that covered the god's face, as was the case with all deities in Nahuatl mythology. Contreras, however, interpreted the mask as being the crown of a Western monarch.[48]
Centeotl, according to Peñafiel, was the deity of maize, who carried in her hands "a distinctive sign of her functions." She was represented by Contreras in a Greek dress, her hands by her waist, with ears of maize in each (see Fig. 11). Peñafiel chose to highlight the productive aspects of the Aztec past, so Centeotl stood in her role as a goddess linked to maize and agriculture. Moreover, just as the French Republic was customarily represented as a neutral female national symbol, Centeotl was represented as a woman in spite of the fact that Centeotl was often portrayed in Nahuatl mythology indistinctly either as a man or woman.[49] Chalchiutlicue, in turn, was interpreted by Peñafiel as "the provider of water's benefits" and was represented in vaguely Greek or Persian clothing.[50]
These three deities—Tlaloc, Centeotl, and Chalchiutlicue—represented, Peñafiel argued, "the protectors of agriculture and soil fertility."[51] They stood on the right side of the building, representing not only pre-Hispanic religious thought but also national agricultural production and prosperity.
In the left corner of the facade three deities were represented: Xochiquetzal, Camaxtli, and Yacatecuhtli. For Peñafiel, Xochiquetzal represented the goddess of art, Camaxtli the god of hunting, and Yacatecuhtli the god of commerce. Contreras's depictions were frontal female and male figures,
Image not available.
10.
Jesús Contreras, Tlaloc, designed for the 1889 Aztec Palace.
Source: Jesús Contreras's personal papers,
reproduced courtesy of Carlos Contreras. (Photograph by Carlos Contreras)
Image not available.
11.
Jesús Contreras, Centeotl, designed for the 1889 Aztec Palace
Source: Jesús Contreras's personal papers,
reproduced courtesy of Carlos Contreras. (Photograph by Carlos Contreras)
with Grecian-style dress and physiognomy. Yacatecuhtli was described by Bernardino de Sahagún with his viatl —a sort of cane—and as the god Indians believed "started this people's trade and commerce."[52] In Camaxtli is the ironic spectacle of a god who was not genuinely Aztec placed together with Tlaloc and the rest of the Aztec pantheon in a supposedly pure Aztec Palace. That is, Camaxtli had been interpreted in different fashions—for example, as the god of fire by Chavero, as Jesus Christ on the Cross by Teresa de Mier. Camaxtli was generally venerated as the god of fairs, though in Tlaxcala and Huegotzingo as the god of hunting, but emphatically, Chavero argued, he was a god who, in common with Tlaxcalan Indians, was never captured by the Aztecs.[53] Nonetheless, Peñafiel needed a deity of productive activities to complement his composition, so he used Camaxtli despite the mythological inconsistency. He interpreted Xochiquetzal as a Grecian-style muse or goddess of art, even though she was more often considered the goddess of sexual pleasure (see Fig. 12).[54]
In visually reconstructing the nation's noble origins, commerce, hunting, and the arts seemed an accurate trio. But it was a careful selection of characters and emphases, for the trio could have easily been that of barter (having nothing to do with modern capitalist commerce), fire, and erotic love .[55]
The heroes were located in the central part of the building's facade, on either side of the main entrance. To the right were the beginnings of the Aztec nation: Itzcoatl, Nezahualcoyotl, and Totoquihuatzin, who together formed, according to Peñafiel, "the triple alliance of the monarchies of Mexico, Texcoco, and Tlacopan." To the left was the end of the Aztec monarchy: Cacama, Cuitlahuac, and Cuauhtémoc. Although Itzcoatl was, Peñafiel claimed, "the true founder of the nation and the monarchy," Nezahualcoyotl was epitomized as the poet king and Totoquihuatzin as the representative of the triple alliance that began the hegemony of the Aztecs. Cacama was considered a martyr in the defense of Mexico during the Spanish Conquest; Cuitlahuac, as the vanquisher of Cortés on La Noche Triste. Cuauhté-moc, according to Peñafiel, was "the greatest figure of national heroism" as well as the last Aztec emperor (see Fig. 13).[56]
All of these figures were copied from the narrative and graphic descriptions in books that had been studied, made available, or produced by the liberal intellectuals who were rewriting Mexico's ancient past (see chapter 5). Chavero's works and those by the older historian Orozco y Berra[57] apparently were fundamental for the modern depiction of these figures, which were then reinterpreted by Contreras in an eclectic fashion that combined the resources of Western classical sculpture with what were believed to be pre-Hispanic motifs.[58] The last three rulers of the Aztecs, following Orozco y Berra's history and Chavero's account, were depicted as heroic figures, dressed for battle,
Image not available.
12.
Jesús Contreras, Xochiquetzal, designed for the 1889 Aztec Palace.
Source: Jesús Contreras's personal papers,
reproduced courtesy of Carlos Contreras. (Photograph by Carlos Contreras)
Image not available.
13.
Jesús Contreras, Cuauhtémoc, designed for the 1889 Aztec Palace.
Source: Jesús Contreras's personal papers,
reproduced courtesy of Carlos Contreras. (Photograph by Carlos Contreras)
with furious gazes. The whole made a clever composition: on one hand, the noble beginning; on the other, the epic ending; in the middle, the entrance to the Mexican pavilion and modern Mexico. In the same fashion that nineteenth-century museums depicted the evolution of men and civilization, or in similar fashion to the portico of the retrospective exposition of anthropological research and science, the Aztec Palace depicted the nation's evolution and introduced visitors to Mexico's version of modernity.
The author of this composition, Jesús Contreras, went on to become a prominent personality in the plastic arts of Porfirian Mexico, as well as a permanent member of the Mexican exhibition team. His grand prize at the 1900 Paris fair for his sculpture Malgré-tout became one of the Porfiriato's "greatest hits" (see Fig. 14). He was also a personal beneficiary of the official effort to modernize the national image. Contreras was granted an official scholarship to study in Europe, as were many other artists during this period.[59] With his focus on bronze, he was only following international trends that, after the decline of neoclassicism and with the growth of bronze sculpture as the material of nationalist symbols, made France, not Italy, the place to be in the 1880s.[60]
As he eventually did for the 1900 world's fair, in 1888, together with E. Colibert, Contreras presented a proposal for a Mexican pavilion in Paris (see
Image not available.
14.
Jesús Contreras and Malgré-tout, which won a grand prize in the 1900 Paris exhibition.
Source: Jesús Contreras's personal papers,
reproduced courtesy of Carlos Contreras. (Photograph by Carlos Contreras)
chapter 11). Among the designs, Contreras and Colibert proposed a copy of El Templo de la Merced, a stand for musical performances to be constructed in Mitla style, and a reproduction of buildings from Palenque. Throughout 1888 Contreras lobbied hard for his proposal, and not until Porfirio Diaz himself gave orders to Díaz Mimiaga to put de Anza in charge of all architectural works did Contreras cease his insistent petitions.[61]
Nonetheless, in 1889 Díaz Mimiaga was a great protector of Contreras, who was only twenty-three at the time. Through this sponsorship, Contreras obtained great favors from the government. With Diaz Mimiaga as intermediary, Contreras was put in charge of the sculpture for the exhibit, a task that included not only the works for the facade of the Aztec Palace but also the reproduction in miniature of Salazar's pavilion and some of the interior sculptures—that is, two huge, sculptured candelabra. In tribute to his patron, Contreras also exhibited a bust of Diaz Mimiaga in Paris. He returned to Mexico in 1890, with warm recommendations from Díaz Mimiaga and with great plans to establish a profitable business catering to the mania for statuary that swept modern nationalist Porfirian Mexico.[62] With this enterprise
in mind, he returned to Europe a year later to purchase the necessary machinery to establish the Fundición Artística Mexicana, a corporation to produce images in stone, bronze, or marble for the state and for private customers. The chairman of the Fundición's board of directors was Porfirio Díaz, and Contreras was the technical director (see Fig. 15). The Fundición was supposed to be dedicated "especially to monumental statues, candelabra, bronze salon statues, and imitation of French, Belgian, and Japanese works."[63] This corporation was an uncommon example of a combination of artistic concerns with capitalist and patriotic goals.
In his twelve sculptures, Contreras fulfilled both the historic-anthropological-archaeological plan conceived by Peñafiel and the technical and stylistic characteristics given to the building by the engineer de Anza. In addition, he furnished the cosmopolitan Parisian public with visible images of the strange characters of Mexico's exotic story. These characters were not at all at odds with the rest of the fair, and their pre-Hispanic inspiration only made more attractive what otherwise might have been regarded as ordinary sculptures.[64] Domestically, Contreras represented the first fully secular Mexican entrepreneurial artist.[65]
Interior Artwork
Contreras's sculptures were requested and paid for by the Mexican government as official efforts to portray the nation. However, inside the Mexican pavilion were other paintings, sculptures, and images that, though not officially sponsored, were also linked directly or indirectly—either by location or by theme—with the national values that the government promoted. Among the various Mexican artistic objects exhibited in Paris, two items were especially welcomed by the French media: Velasco's landscape-painting school, and some canvases with pre-Hispanic motifs. However, it is difficult to believe that late-nineteenth-century foreign art critics would have bothered to look at Mexican paintings so closely had it not been for the convincing inducement of money paid by the Mexican government.
According to art critic Léon Cahun, Mexico, unlike the rest of America, had an original artistic school that depicted both its natural beauty and its heroic history. He especially liked the scene from national history in which "a Mexican orator is seen speaking, before the Senate of Tlaxcala, against the alliance with Cortés." He was also impressed by Velasco's works: "Yes, there is a landscape-painting school in Mexico, and a school that does not owe anything to anyone, that does not imitate anyone, that has been formed by itself, by looking at the marvelous vegetation of the [Mexican] valleys." According to Cahun, Velasco's works differed from those of Corot or Rousseau—who were then in the vanguard of French landscape painting—in the same way
Image not available.
15.
Poster for Jesús Contreras's company, Fundición Artística Mexicana.
Source: Jesús Contreras's personal papers,
reproduced courtesy of Carlos Contreras. (Photograph by Carlos Contreras)
that "Mexico differs from the countryside of the Seine valley."[66] Cahun believed that in Velasco's painting Mexico achieved what modern art was all about: a unique but universal style.
The Mexican art exhibit was composed mainly of paintings by Velasco, which combined various emphases: tropical or exotic natural beauty, historical allegories of the official historiography, and modernism through technological advances (especially railroads, the epitome of late-nineteenth-century modernism). As representations of natural beauty, these canvases reflect the naturalist scientific concerns of the era. As art historian Juan de la Encina argued in the 1940s, Velasco's work represents the national achievement of a preimpressionist but postromantic positivist naturalism. This process began with official efforts in the midnineteenth century to hire experts to teach aspiring Mexicans how to render representations of the national territory and history (for which purpose the Italian landscape painter Eugenio Landesio was employed). The process was accelerated by the flowering of natural history, geology, anthropology, and archaeology as scientific and objective views of nature.
As portraits of Mexican modernity Velasco's paintings were postcards that served both for the popularization of technology and as international propaganda for the coexistence in Mexico of tropical backwardness and modernity. In particular, the depiction of bridges and railways served as striking contrasts to the wildness of the landscapes. The canvases were thus genuine advertisements for the industrial transformation of Mexico, however slight. They also responded to pragmatic economic interests; that is, before the appearance of photography, and even with the advent of the camera, railroad companies and industries paid to have artistic vistas of their roads and buildings created.[67]
No one rivaled Velasco's expertise in the various aspects of landscape painting. Velasco managed to make himself indispensable as a masterful depicter of a scientific, nationalist, and modern era. His technical expertise allowed him to achieve the objectivity and accuracy that realism and scientism required,[68] and his pragmatic and nationalistic imagination allowed him to satisfy different representational needs, both his own and those of his clients.
Undoubtedly, by the early 1890s Velasco's type of landscape naturalist painting had already seen its best moments, at least by European standards. However, it continued to be produced and appreciated.[69] More importantly, for the industrialized world, landscape painting was a sharp ideal contrast with life in many industrial cities and towns. Canvases such as Velasco's were bucolic visions of a paradise lost. For Mexico's modern national image Velasco's landscape painting constituted also a twofold exercise. First, it was precisely that: a bucolic scenario with a tropical mixture that could furnish a contrast with the newly industrialized world. But it was also a symbolic, flashlike,
and easily learnable report on the state of the nation expressed in a common cosmopolitan language. It wooed emigration, investment, and international confidence through the depiction of nature, progress, and history.[70]
Among the paintings Velasco exhibited in Paris were two general views of the valley of Mexico, a view of Guelatao (Oaxaca), various waterfall scenes from Orizaba (Veracruz), two views of the Canada de Metlac , and Ahuhuétes from Chapultepec. In all of these paintings the natural, pure, fertile, or tropical aspects of Mexico were emphasized. Also included were the national symbols and icons of the official nationalist ideology, presented as part of an overall realist impression. For, as Cahun argued, "Velasco knows how to make the trees and the mountains live and speak in his own country of Mexico, that is clear: I do not know what he would do in France. . .. No one is a real writer except in his own language. . .. M. Velasco is a genuine painter, and his painting is the robust and healthy child of his native soil."[71] Thus one of the paintings of the valley of Mexico included some scenes of manners and customs, and the other featured an eagle and a nopal cactus. Guelatao was not only part of Oaxaca, Díaz's beloved state, but also the birthplace of Benito Juárez, the Porfirian-sponsored member of the Mexican pantheon. The painting of the bridge of Metlac pictured a railroad crossing the Mexican tropics, thus placing an emphasis on Mexican progress.[72] Velasco painted various views of railroads in Metlac, which he exhibited in Paris 1889 and 1900—such as Cañada de Metlac (1897), Puente curvo del Ferrocarril Mexicano en la Canada de Metlac (1881), and Canada de Metlac (1881).
Velasco was not the first to paint the valley of Mexico, but he was the first to combine realism in painting with scientific accuracy, a combination that echoed the interaction of national and international trends. He was a naturalist who had studied zoology and botany in the national school of medicine, from which resulted various paintings reproduced in La Naturaleza , the journal of the Sociedad Mexicana de Historia Natural. His realist view thus harmonized easily with the scientific objectivity of a positivist era. In addition, Velasco's scientific objectivism went beyond the realm of nature to gain inspiration from historical and anthropological accounts. As Ramirez argues, whereas Velasco used scenes of manners and customs in his romantic beginnings, he gradually moved toward greater proficiency in realistic representations and drew his inspiration from historical themes.[73] Comparing the view of the valley of Mexico exhibited by Velasco at the 1876 Philadelphia fair with the one presented at the 1878 Paris world's fair (both of which were also displayed in 1889), Ramirez has shown how the genre scenes of the former gave way in the latter to a grandiose panorama in which an eagle flies, with prey in its fangs, toward a nopal. This change made of Velasco's landscape painting a real national emblem: the city, surrounded by unpolluted wilderness, and the national symbol flying (see Fig. 16).
Velasco began to paint railroads in 1869, and in Paris 1889 he exhibited
Image not available.
16.
José María Velasco, Valle de México desde el cerro de Santa Isabel (1877).
Source: Museo Nacional de Arte, Mexico City;
reproduction authorized by the Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes,
Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes, Museo Nacional de Arte, Mexico.
(Photograph by the Museo Nacional de Arte)
two views of the Metlac barranca (see Fig. 17). Since the late 1870s, railroads in landscape paintings had been all too common, for a steel track over wild and untamed nature was unequaled as a symbol of progress. However, by the 1880s Velasco's vistas were echoed by numerous photographic images. At the 1889 Paris fair the Ferrocarril Nacional Mexicano exhibited thirty-four photographic views, and the Ministry of Economic Development displayed photographs of the Mexico-Veracruz railroad.[74] When the Mexican government promoted the national image of progress, it requested that private companies send photographs of their latest projects, and the requests were answered with the efforts of some of the best photographers available. Nonetheless, most of the landscape photographs were taken by foreigners.[75] Among the most renowned photographers of Mexican railroads was the American William Henry Jackson. He was hired by the Compañía del Ferrocarril Central and came to México to work in 1882, 1891, and 1893. Jackson was one of the most prestigious photographers of the American West, an important personality among those who fashioned symbolic images of American nationalism. In Mexico he had the same motivations that inspired
Image not available.
17.
José María Velasco, La Cañada de Metlac (Citlaltepec) (1897).
Source: Museo Nacional de Arte, Mexico City;
reproduction authorized by the Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes,
Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes, Museo Nacional de Arte, Mexico.
(Photograph by the Museo Nacional de Arte)
his pictures of the American West: "to celebrate the technologization of wilderness" and to show "its availability to tourists."[76] He photographed railroads in exactly the same way that Velasco painted them.[77]
However great the effort to mirror reality, naturalist and realist paintings were inescapably ideal and subjective. The camera, in contrast, seemed to be "a near magical device for defeating time, for endowing the past with a present it had previously had only in memory."[78] However, in the late nineteenth century, although photographs put past and present together in instant flashes easily and cheaply available, they were considered mere testimonies, not art.[79] In 1889 the objectivity of the photographic image, though powerful, did not possess the authority of an artistic-scientific representation. A Velasco painting included what photography was able to produce, together with the subtleties of color and perspective that inspired his renderings (that is, aesthetic, nationalistic, and moral elements).[80]
Photography itself was used at this time to depict much more than railroads. The sculptures of the facade of the Aztec Palace contrasted with the numerous photographs of Mexican Indians that were displayed within the structure. For instance, the government of Colima sent various photographs of Indians from Colima; the photography studio of Valleto sent numerous
portraits of cartas de presentación (calling cards); the state of Morelos sent twenty-two photographs of Tlahuica idols; and Yucatán, twenty-six photographs of antiquities. The Mexico City collection included portraits of tipos populates made by the photographic establishment Cruces y Compañía (also known as Cruces y Campa), pictures that had had a great reception at the 1876 Philadelphia fair.[81] This type of view helped to create a portable image of the exotic for both national and international consumption.[82]
Photography was considered "The Pencil of Nature," and its objectivity was believed to be beyond style.[83] The existence of photography was itself proof of modernity, whether it portrayed a railroad or a tipo popular . Paintings, in contrast, had to construct the modern forms through their style and content. That is, whereas photographs could serve as objective reports to prove that Mexico was capable of receiving immigrants and foreign investment, they were not evidence of Mexico's cosmopolitan culture. Once again, to be modern and nationalist was above all a matter of style, and only such painters as Velasco succeeded in this difficult task. Therefore, until the beginning of the twentieth century, his works were indispensable components of both Mexico's presence at world's fairs and the construction of the image of a modern nation as a whole. For, as art historian Justino Fernán-dez has argued, very few artists could make Mexico look the way Velasco did: in his works Mexico was itself being like Europe.[84]
The Contreras sculptures and the entire facade of the Mexican building were echoed by numerous paintings with pre-Hispanic motifs: El Senado de Tlaxcala by Rodrigo Gutiérrez, Xochitl presenta al rey Tépancalzin el pulque by José Obregón, Funerales de un Indígena by José Jara, together with a replica of the Cuauhtémoc monument. Although pre-Hispanic-oriented paintings had been rendered previously, after 1870 works in this vein acquired ideological value for the Porfirian regime as well as some national and international artistic recognition.
One of the most noted of these paintings was El Senado de Tlaxcala (see Fig. 18). The author, Rodrigo Gutiérrez, had exhibited a painting in the classical style at the 1884 New Orleans fair,[85] but he had changed his source of inspiration by treating pre-Hispanic motifs, though in identical classicist fashion. El Senado de Tlaxcala was in fact painted at the request of the wealthy lawyer and historian Felipe Sánchez Solis, who needed the image for his general collection of pre-Hispanic antiquities.[86] The painting depicted a Roman-style senate with Tlaxcalan Indians discussing whether to join Cortés's venture against the Aztecs. Likewise, a canvas by José Obregón, known as El descubrimiento del pulque (originally painted in 1869), was also commissioned by Sánchez Solis, and it depicted the Tula's ruler, Tecpancaltzin, in the act of receiving from Xochitl the pulque beverage extracted from maguey (see Fig. 19). Obregón had a classical academic training, generally devoted to biblical topics. His incursion into pre-Hispanic motifs was especially wel-
Image not available.
18.
Rodrigo Gutiérrez, El Senado de Tlaxcala (1875).
Source: Museo Nacional de Arte, Mexico City;
reproduction authorized by the Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes,
Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes, Museo Nacional de Arte. (Photograph by the Museo Nacional de Arte)
comed in the 1880s, when both El Senado de Tlaxcala and El descubrimiento del pulque were purchased by the Mexican government for exhibition at world's fairs and on other special occasions.[87]
These two paintings were emblematic of an official sanction of the Indian past. As with the facade of the Aztec Palace, the paintings sought to order, classify, and civilize knowledge of the Indian past in such a way as to make it accessible and worthy of respect. Reproductions were included in numerous textbooks, including México a través de los siglos . However, in the relationship between artistic-historical depiction of this sort and history and archaeology, the aim was not historical accuracy but rather a mimetic mutual convenience: patriotic history and archaeology procured with these paintings useful representations to reinforce their stories; and these paintings obtained from history and archaeology the inspiration for every detail.
El descubrimiento del pulque echoed the clamor that surrounded the fashioning of a national culture, whose most important speaker was Ignacio
Image not available.
19.
José Obregón, El descubrimiento del pulque (1869).
Source: Fomento Cultural Banamex,
from the collection of the Banco Nacional de México. (Photograph by Rafael Doniz)
Manuel Altamirano. According to Fernando de Alva Ixtlilxochitl, Xochitl was a virgin who, accompanied by her father Papantzin, presented "the honey of the maguey" to Tecpancaltzin, then ruler of the Toltecs.[88] Xochitl was so beautiful that Tecpancoltzin seduced her, procreating a son who eventually became a ruler. But in the painting, as art historian Justino Fernández observed, Tecpancoltzin was portrayed as a Hellenic Apollo, and Xochitl as a Greek princess. This story of love, beauty, and power could not be better suited to the Western romantic spirit of the second half of the nineteenth century. The Indian past was thus civilized through a classical romantic filter.
Contemporaries were aware of the fact that this type of artistic representation took excessive liberties with historical data. Graphic artistic representations of history, because they were considered art, were not criticized for maneuvering reality in order to display not truer and more accurate versions but the most effective visual impressions of historical events. Objectivity was less important than were didactic and artistic effectiveness. Thus, whereas French critics considered El descubrimiento del pulque as an authentic and vivid
representation of the Aztec past, Altamirano acknowledged that the painting was a bit conventional. He pointed out that the Xochitl of Obregón's canvas was not an Indian woman at all: the artist took as his model "for the graceful Xochitl not a bronze-skinned Indian mistress, but a beautiful mestiza whose light swarthy complexion revealed the mixing of European blood." For Altamirano, the image of old Indians in the canvases were too modern, but he believed that El descubrimiento del pulque , "as an ensayo in national painting . . . deserves the best compliment."[89] That is, in developing a national image, every single effort was an ensayo and that was what was expected.
However, the paradox between accuracy and effectiveness echoed a larger incongruity: the Mexican elite's contradictory consideration of the Indian past and present. Ironically enough, what Xochitl offered the Toltec ruler was pulque, an Indian alcoholic beverage that Mexican criollos considered an important cause of Indian degeneration. In this regard, El descubrimiento del pulque embodied the Porfirian elite's ambivalence toward Mexican Indians: on one hand, the epic past in which a princess presents a king with a respectable alcoholic beverage; on the other, the repugnant present situation of the Indians' addiction to pulque. This last factor was noticeable not only in the disapproval of pulque displayed by the urban elite but also in scientific treatises. Medical studies of the effects of pulque on the so-called popular classes discovered a particular sort of "Mexican pathology" that was distinct from cirrhosis. Some of these studies—for example, the one by Francisco Altamirano—were exhibited in Paris in 1889. A natural proclivity to alcoholism was believed to be present among Indians.[90]
Despite these scientific reservations, since the 1884 New Orleans fairs, pulque was depicted (and also distributed) as an exotic beverage. In the same way that in 1884 a pamphlet on pulque was prepared,[91] in Paris 1889, in Obregón's painting, pulque was romanticized into a benevolent and acceptable beverage, not only through its depiction as part of a "past past" but also through the subtle inclusion of a common nineteenth-century erotic motif: the myth of the sexually desirable Amazon-like woman.[92]
The Art of Art
Mexico's artistic display was admired by Europeans especially for its exotic aspects, and thus the landscape paintings and canvases with pre-Hispanic subjects won recognition in France. Velasco's work (and also a bust of Diaz sculpted by Gabriel Guerra) obtained silver medals, the highest award given to Mexican artistic objects. In addition, Velasco was named a member of the Legion of Honor.[93] Aside from Guerra's bust of Díaz, only two other artists who shunned the pre-Hispanic received awards: Antonio Bibriesca and Andrés Belmont. The former exhibited a portrait of the French consul in Guanajuato; the latter, a portrait of Porfirio Díaz![94]
As with the entire Aztec Palace, the Mexican paintings were seen as laudable and valid, though not necessarily successful, attempts to emulate French models. Nonetheless, Mexico's exotic artistic display was also seen by some European eyes—like Van Gogh or Gauguin who saw in 1889 the architecture and culture of a primitive people—as a potential source of renewal and spontaneity for Western art. But this last perspective was yet to be fully developed in 1889,[95] and Mexico had to wait for European tastes to change and for its French-trained Diego Riveras to emerge.
Velasco himself, as chief of the arts group, wrote a report on Mexico's performance at Paris.[96] He believed that the reason Mexico won so few awards in this category was that its art was not exhibited in the art palace, unlike the United States and other countries. Velasco's silver medal was put into perspective by Velasco himself, when he explained that grand prizes were conferred only on exceptional artists, such as Leopold Flameng. Mexico's awards were in the same category as such distinguished painters as Moreno Carbonero.[97]
In 1889 French painting was experiencing—as we can acknowledge a posteriori—the last moments of the preeminence of neoclassical and romantic styles, which were widely displayed in official salons. These tendencies were embodied in J. L. Ernest Meissonier, who in 1889 was the president of the great art jury. He was a salon painter of famous historic portraits of France's greatest collective unspoken self-esteem: Napoleon.[98] Although impressionist painters were represented, they would not obtain official recognition until the 1900 Paris fair. In effect, the germs of so-called modern art were present at Paris 1889—for example, Monet and Degas—as they had been in the 1860s' Salon des Refusés, but the 1889 fair was dominated by academic classicist tendencies.
Velasco himself viewed those seeds of modern art with distaste. He admired the museum and the canonic exhibitions more than the streets of Bohemian Paris,[99] but he did report favorably on some paintings he had seen in the French exhibition.[100] Among the exhibits of other countries he especially liked the Spanish painter Francisco Pradilla (La rendición de Granada ), but he pointed out the overall weakness of the Latin American exhibits. For him, very few Latin American artists were worthy of mention.
The Mexican artists who came to Paris, Velasco explicitly agreed, were there to learn and copy the art of the city—the artistic capital of the world. But how did the models who were being copied react to this mimetic Mexican exercise? Mexican newspapers reproduced numerous favorable reports from the French media. Indeed, French art critics were officially invited to write about Mexico, and they interpreted Mexican art as functioning within an evolutionary line and thus as still rather childlike and immature. Those epithets, of course, served then (and now) to disqualify, artistic works.[101] In this connection, Velasco reported to the Mexican commission on his per-
sonal journey through the Mexican art exhibit accompanied by various European artists and art critics, and he described the impressions of the British art critic George A. H. Sala and those of the French artists Meissonier, Pierre Fritel, and François Pierre Guillon.[102]
If, as has been so often argued, Mexican artists were merely imitating French artistic fashions, they were doing so mostly for domestic consumption. Velasco believed that despite the fact that European art and artistic influence was dominant in Mexico, there existed some autonomy in Mexican paintings of figures and landscape scenes—especially in the latter, because since Landecio's arrival there had been little importation of artistic tendencies to Mexico. Velasco argued that all countries followed France—save England, he believed; and yet, all European countries had an original style. All of those styles were in contact, unlike Mexican art, which remained apart from mainstream artistic tendencies. But Velasco was certain that art was "essential to every country regardless of its development," because "men in particular and societies in general show a tendency toward beauty."[103] Therefore, there was no option for Mexico but to continue the efforts to develop a national art, though those efforts had to be conscious of their own weaknesses and tentative nature. Therefore, he believed, there was no art in America in part because of the underdevelopment of both art and industry.
In sum, Velasco's was perhaps the most acute Mexican artistic eye to appraise fin-de-siècle Paris. But he left no images of it; he was as parochial and as universal as his paintings, which, according to Manuel Payno, were considered by Meissonier croûtes (bad paintings).[104] The ideal image of the homogeneous classical French art that he had learned in Mexico was threatened by the rather hererogenous, chaotic, and contradictory images of fin-de-siècle Paris, and he opted to defend the ideal image of France, even if in so doing he seemed to be defending France from itself: "In spite of the great liberty for artists that prevails in France, there are a number among them who maintain good principles, and do not let art just rush in. . .. Today's situation would be very appropriate for despairing, for arriving at a complete baroquism, at the most untasteful extravaganza, if not for a certain number of maestros with great talent who sustain high art."[105]
To sum up the analyses of the Aztec Palace presented in the last three chapters, some general aspects can be highlighted. First, since reconciliation was the key term in Mexican politics, the whole cultural panorama had to do with joining pieces, with eclecticism, with pragmatic selection from whatever was available to bring about the impression of homogeneity and harmony. Thus, while the architectural facade of the Aztec Palace had to reconcile pre-Hispanic styles with modern forms, it also had to join various understandings of the pre-Hispanic past.
Second, this variety of eclecticism was especially characteristic of modern times because it was consciously ephemeral yet comprehensive and universal. Whereas there were no doubts about progress—for either French or Mexican officials—they were all too aware that whatever they did was only a trial, however scientific and complex it might be. Mexican architects were well aware that an Aztec Palace constituted the strongest chance of having an important impact in France, yet they knew that it was only an attempt whose contribution to a stable national style was yet to be seen. The essaylike nature of their ventures was especially evident in late-nineteenth-century world's fairs that were themselves the greatest state-of-the-art ensayos on modernity in the Western world.
Finally, if experimental eclecticism characterized modern times in 1889, it was because what was in play was forms. Thus classificatory and hierarchical arrangements were inevitably artificial; that is, contingent and eclectic. Late-nineteenth-century nationalism and progress were a matter of facades. The facades were not hypocritical accidental forms, but indeed the only essence available in modern times to constitute collective and individual identities. Consequently, the Aztec Palace manipulated different styles to form a universal nationhood, recognizable to the Western world, and acceptable and learnable for the inhabitants of Mexico.
Whatever appellation the Aztec Palace earned—exotic, uniquely Mexican, traditional, antique, non-Western—it incarnated a specific hierarchical classification set by unequal economic and cultural relations. Of course, the Aztec Palace and its exhibit were less advanced—technologically and industrially— than the rest of the fair was. And yet, formally it was less modern only because it was less powerful: it was the symbol of a poorer nation. It was included in classifications, but it did not participate in classifying. The entire fair, including its Aztec Palace, was forging the terms modern, progressive, and national. Dichotomous hierarchical classification—barbaric-civilized, modern-traditional, exotic-cosmopolitan—would endure, mutating to adjust to changing power relations. But as far as the idea of a modern nation was conceived, and as far as a Westernizing Mexican elite was concerned, to be modern constituted a multifaceted and painful collective outgrowth; in this modern way of being, it was difficult to point out insides and outsides.